Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Robin Olds

[ORAC]

AWST Review: Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a0568e8dd-182d-400b-a268-9a549597d887&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest)

............His description of a recurring dream about a fighter pilot's final flight in an F-4 Phantom will cause even the crustiest airman to choke up. Brig. Gen. Robin Olds died of congestive heart failure on June 14, 2007, and was buried at the U.S. Air Force Academy cemetery.

Today's fighter pilots are told they'll be replaced by bomb-laden unmanned aircraft flown by "operators" sitting in air-conditioned cubicles halfway around the world from battlefields. Because their careers can be snuffed in a heartbeat by a single politically incorrect quip, or by an alcohol-induced antic, pilots now go to the gym instead of the club. And senior officers who decide which pilots get promoted comb personnel records for graduate degrees instead of demonstrated bombing skills; for program-management kudos rather than flying ability and air medals; for squeaky-clean command tours versus air combat leadership.

Many of those officers may fly and labor in silence, but each yearns to fly wing on a real leader, a commander and fighter pilot's fighter pilot, a warrior like Robin Olds.

[noprobs]

Let's not forget that he was also once the Boss of No 1 (Fighter) Squadron RAF.

[PLovett]

I have it on my wish list having read a number of articles about the man previously.

Given his penchant for upsetting those above I am surprised he lasted as long as he did but then that is often the way with warriors which he most certainly was.

[bobward]

I read somewhere that they wanted to have Robin Olds stuffed and put in a glass case in the Pentagon. On the case would be a notice saying

"In case of war, break glass immediately".

The man had his faults, as do we all. His greatest strength was being able to say 'follow me' and people did.
:ok:

[soddim]

When I met him he told me that he had learned all he knew about flying fighters from his time on No 1 Squadron RAF - high praise indeed!

[JEM60]

Met him at Oshkosh. Wisconsin, in 2005. I remembered a wonderful interview years ago on satellite TV that was sooooooooo down to earth.
Last Sunday, I watched one of his old mounts, The Golden Apple Trust F.86A being flown spiritedly at Duxford by Mark Linney. Robin Olds would have loved to see it, and yes, he did fly this very aircraft, the world's oldest flying jet.

[Evalu8ter]

I have the book coming, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Olds was very much a man of his times; he would now be considered an un-reconstructed dinosaur, without a dialect consisting totally of Staff bu**sh*t bingo wa*kwords. He was very much a victim of the "tall poppy syndrome" along with other luminaries as Boyd and Warden, and other repected combat leaders such as Broughton. Not a bomber puke in a bomber puke's USAF, and not a ticket-punching career officer who could be relied to toe the party line in the Pentagon...an aviator's aviator.

Listen to "Last of the Breed" by Dos Gringos, I think it sums up the passing of the like of Olds rather well.